Harry Feversham and Broad Place
“He arrived about five o’clock on an afternoon of sunshine in mid June, and the old red-brick house, lodged on a southern slope of the Surrey hills, was glowing from a dark forest depth of pines with the warmth of a rare jewel”
The words “glowing” and “dark” are used to create a visual image in the mind of the reader. Similarly, the word “warmth” is employed to appeal to the reader's bodily senses. The use of imagery here serves to foreshadow the truth of Harry Feversham’s character. Just like his house, he is warm and shining like a rare jewel when compared to the long line of soldiers to which he belongs.
The burning Letters of Cowardice
“He was only aware that the dreadful thing for so many years dreadfully anticipated had at last befallen him. He was known for a coward. The word which had long blazed upon the wall of his thoughts in letters of fire was now written large in the public places. He stood as he had once stood before the portraits of his fathers, mutely accepting condemnation. It was the girl who denied, as she still kneeled upon the floor.”
The words “blazed” and “fire” appeal to the senses of the reader and make him feel the actual pain experienced by Harry on whom the letters of the word “coward” had the same effect of blazing fire.
The Fourth Feather
For a time, there are just three white feathers of interest. The title has not yet been achieved when Harry is forced by circumstances to confess to the literal authenticity behind the symbolic meaning of the three white feathers. This leads to the addition which completes the title:
“though her voice was steady and her face, despite its pallor, calm, she was really tortured with humiliation and pain. All the details of Harry Feversham's courtship, the interchange of looks, the letters she had written and received, the words which had been spoken, tingled and smarted unbearably in her recollections. Their lips had touched—she recalled it with horror. She desired never to see Harry Feversham after this night. Therefore she added her fourth feather to the three.”
The Escape from Prison
“It was one of those nightmare faces which had used to grow big and had come so horribly close to him in the dark nights of his boyhood as he lay in bed. He put out a weak arm and thrust it aside. But he gazed about him. He was lying in the shadow of the prison house, and the hard blue sky above him, the brown bare trampled soil on which he lay, and the figures of his fellow-prisoners dragging their chains or lying prone upon the ground in some extremity of sickness gradually conveyed their meaning to him.”
The use of figurative language to represent objects in this passage stimulates the reader’s imagination in order to give him a full account of the dreadful circumstances experienced by Feversham during his incarceration in jail.
Colonel Durrance's Depth
“He was a dark lantern to her. There might be a flame burning within, or there might be mere vacancy and darkness. She was pushing back the slide so that she might be sure.”
The imagery in this passage includes the use of metaphors such as “He was a dark lantern to her”. In addition to that, the use of words appealing to the sense of the reader like “burning” and “vacancy” emphasizes the depth of Durrance’s character and induces the reader to join Ethne in the analysis of his discourse and personality.
Appearance and Public Image
“They were men of one stamp; no distinction of uniform could obscure their relationship -lean-faced men, hard as iron, rugged in feature, thin-lipped, with firm chins and straight, level mouths, narrow foreheads, and the steel-blue inexpressive eyes…”
This is the description of Harry’s ancestors as he stood looking at their portraits in the hall of Broad Place. He was brought up according to narrow and rigid conventions which taught him that these were heroic men, and more importantly that this is the way heroes were supposed to look. The use of imagery in this passage highlights the hypocrisy of late Victorian society which favored public image and appearance over integrity.
Men and River
“To their left the river gleamed with changing lights – here it ran the color of an olive, there rose pink, and here again a brilliant green…”
This is the description of a river that ran near the house of stone. The use of imagery here is symbolic of the complexity of human nature and human psychology. The prison house was full of men who are at once similar and different from one another. Like water they were all the same; that is to say Men who have lost their freedom. At the same time, they were different; each one of them had his own different personality, dreams, intentions, and thoughts. So just like the water in the river, each maintained his own color even in the main stream of the prison house.
